Best-selling author and illustrator Small (
Home After Dark) presents a collection of three short stories. The titular tale, adapted from a story by Lincoln Michel, concerns an aging werewolf reflecting on the bestial rampages of his past with both revulsion and nostalgia during a visit to a local pharmacy. In the second story, “A Walk in the Old City,” a psychiatrist becomes lost during an afternoon stroll. After wandering the bank of a canal filled with ink-black water and meeting an enigmatic stranger who keeps enormous spiders as pets, he wonders if he’s experiencing a dream laden with imagery meaningful to his own life, or whether he’s a character in a dream someone else is having. Finally, Small adapts Jean Ferry’s “The Tiger in Vogue.” Set in Berlin in the 1930s, an unnamed narrator attends a music-hall performance involving a live tiger dressed in gentlemanly attire pantomiming a night out with a beautiful human companion.
VERDICT Small’s fluid linework and exceptional visual storytelling result in a compelling, deeply affecting collection.
Comment Policy:
Comment should not be empty !!!